TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
COP26, climate politics and equity to renewable energy
But expecting governments, the private sector and the public to come together to cut carbon emissions always seems like having a utopian conversation.
Change Size
Demanding change: People participate in a protest rally during a global day of action on climate change in Glasgow on Nov. 6, 2021, during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). (AFP/Daniel Leal-Olivas)
I
t is getting harder to ignore climate change these days. With floods ravaging cities from Germany to the United States and fires raging in forests from Greece to Australia, it has become an existential threat to humanity.
Scientists, who have continued to warn about the catastrophic impacts of the heating planet, now sound like doomsday prophets. Their empirical projections are now justified with frequent natural disasters that occur even in developed countries that have implemented strong mitigation.
But expecting governments, the private sector and the public to come together to cut carbon emissions always seems like having a utopian conversation.
And despite countries convening every year to address this issue – this year is the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in the Scottish city of Glasgow – nothing, except for the pandemic in the past two years, has ever stopped the planet from hitting new temperature records.
At the very heart of the problem, regardless of all good intentions, is the notion that carbon emissions are the currency of economic growth, which has been the case since the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18th Century.
The trend continues today. Fossil fuel emissions from energy production, industrial processes and transportation remain the largest contributors of global emissions and large economies like China, the US, India, Russia and Japan are the biggest emitters.
And as countries recover from an economic recession caused by the pandemic, the appetite for fossil fuels is expected to rise because they are still the cheapest sources of energy.
